Pawan Hans gets dubious distinction of being one of the most accident-prone helicopter operators in

Pawan Hans gets dubious distinction of being one of the most accident-prone helicopter operators in the world

A poor choice of helicopter, insufficient number of pilots and inadequate maintenance infrastructure have contributed to make Pawan Hans one of the more accident-prone helicopter operators in the world. What's worse, it seems destined to fly deeper into trouble.

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Ramindar Singh

June 15, 1989

ISSUE DATE: June 15, 1989

UPDATED: October 29, 2013 13:04 IST

Pawan Hans' maintenance hangar in Bombay

What do you get when you take unwanted Westland helicopters fitted with untried, temperamental Rolls Royce engines, thrust them on an infant corporation, Pawan Hans, and force it to service a subcontinent? That too with only half the required pilot strength and one-fifth the number of maintenance engineers. Add another 21 French helicopters, and you have a recipe for disaster. In fact, three disasters.

One Westland crashed in Jammu and Kashmir in July 1988 while attempting to land near the Vaishno Devi shrine with five pilgrims on board. All the five plus two crew members died in the crash.

A month later, a Dauphin helicopter returning to Madras from an offshore oil rig flew into the sea, killing eight passengers and two pilots. In February 1989, another West-land crashed near Kohima, killing two more pilots and a technician.

The shoe-string operation that Pawan Hans is running and the faulty choice of helicopter-is a recipe for disaster. Already, 20 people have died in three crashes and Pawan Hans seems headed for serious trouble.

These crashes have made Pawan Hans one of the more accident-prone helicopter operators in the world and cost the corporation heavily in terms of loss of public confidence. Were the crashes due to faulty equipment, bad maintenance or simple pilot error? The way Pawan Hans is run, there is ample scope for suspicion in all three areas.

More than anything else, it is the skittish Westland helicopter which has been causing Pawan Hans sleepless nights. Almost immediately after the Westlands were introduced in India in 1986, some of them had to be grounded for what was the first in a series of engine problems. The Westland's two engines, which are linked to the main rotor, were found to be developing unequal power.

Later there were problems with the rotors and excessive vibration which caused oil pipes to rupture. As some problems got solved - the asymmetrical power was traced to a faulty electronic sensor - others, equally serious, have surfaced. Excessive oil consumption, oil leaks and inadequate power generation by the engine have crippled operations.

The then minister for civil aviation Motilal Vora admitted in Parliament last March that 53 defective engines had had to be prematurely taken off the West-lands. The company executives from Britain, accompanied by Rolls Royce engineers, rushed to India to examine the engines as word leaked out that the Civil Aviation Ministry had discussed the possibility of grounding the entire Westland fleet of 19 helicopters.

Westland found unfit for high-altitude operations. Ministry of Defence identifies the Soviet Mi 17 as a possible replacement.

But within weeks, 10 more engines developed defects and had to be removed, bringing the total number of premature engine removals to 63. Pawan Hans Managing Director Wing Commander K.K. Saini wrote to the Ministry of Civil Aviation in end April '87, pointing out that 3 57 defects had been reported on the West-lands in 17,500 hours of flying and 63 engines had had to be removed.

This, Saini said, meant one defect every 49 hours of flying and one engine removal every 290 hours. Rolls Royce had guaranteed a trouble-free performance of 1,000 hours for each engine. For its 19 West lands, Pawan Hans has 21 spare engines, but engine failures have been so frequent and unexpected that it is running out of them. Last fortnight, nine helicopters were sitting on the ground; some had been out of operation for over three months.

With so many helicopters crippled - seven Dauphins are also grounded-Saini sent out an SOS for a loan of Mi 8 or Mi 17 helicopters from the Indian Air Force (IAF). Pawan Hans was set up basically to provide the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) with helicopter services for its offshore oil rigs and platforms, a job previously being done by foreign helicopter companies and the IAF.

Saini's request for IAF helicopters means a return to status QUO ante. Pawan Hans had contracted to provide ONGC with 13 helicopters for Bombay High. Since February, Pawan Hans has been able to provide only 11. Now ONGC has upped its demand to 16 helicopters for Bombay High alone.

Saini asked the ministry to direct Westland and Rolls Royce to repair the defective engines. Enquiries reveal that 13 of the 63 engine removals were due to foreign object damage (FOD) - caused by the ingestion of nuts, bolts and other material into the engine - 10 due to oil leaks, seven to excessive oil consumption, nine because of detection of metal particles in the oil (indicating excessive metal wear in bearings or similar parts) and six to engines not producing enough power.

The high incidence of FOD has created differences between Westland and Rolls Royce and between the two and Pawan Hans. Rolls is not willing to consider FOD as an engine defect. One Westland, which force-landed on Juhu beach, was found to have a three-inch bolt in its engine.

"If an engine is fed nuts and bolts it is bound to have damage," says a Rolls engineer. Retorts Saini: "I have made it clear to Westland that it will have to modify the helicopter or keep repairing the engines at its own cost."

Pawan Hans engineers in Bombay say the FOD problem continues even after West-land engineers covered the engine intake with a fine steel mesh. Moreover, the French Dauphin helicopters, whose intakes are closer to the ground than West-lands, have had no such problem operating from the same helipads.

Rolls Royce representatives and Pawan Hans engineers agree that there is an aerodynamic problem with the position and shape of the engine intake. Since the intake is situated right behind the main gearbox, any oil leak from the gearbox - and there have been plenty - or broken seals and parts get sucked into the engine.

This is also the reason why the engines are not producing enough power. "The leaking oil and dust particles coat the turbine blades and form a hard plaque which retards power production," say Pawan Hans engineers.

The steel mesh across the intake is only one modification completed by West-land. Rolls Royce has initiated at least eight modifications to control the engine's excessive oil consumption.

Why has the engine been giving so much trouble? One reason is Rolls Royce's Gem-60 engine is an untried one. This is the first aircraft on which the engine has been fitted and Pawan Hans is the only operator using either the Westland-30 or the Gem-60 engine. Pan Am had bought three Westlands but discontinued the service because of the trouble they gave.

Pawan Hans helicopter landing on a rig

Pawan Hans pilots at Bombay High make around 70 landings a day while
most other countries and operators do not allow more than 30 landings a
day.

Is Pawan Hans being used as a testing ground for a helicopter and engine no one else in the world is using? The answer is yes. "We have become guinea-pigs for Westland and Rolls Royce. Rolls Royce keeps experimenting with the engine. It tells us to do this or that. We have to spend precious man-hours in fixing the engines and making test flights," one engineer complained.

Mechanical reliability is not the only thing suspect about the Westland. Its load-carrying performance at high altitudes is so poor that when it was tried on the Dehradun-Badrinath route, its performance deteriorated to the point that it could carry only two or three passengers. At sea level it is a 17-seater.

This put paid to Pawan Hans plans to start helicopter services to high-altitude points in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and the North-east, and prompted the Ministry of Civil Aviation to start a desperate search for an alternative helicopter.

"We have identified the Soviet Mi 17 helicopter which can carry 22 passengers at an altitude of 10,000 ft," said S.K. Misra, secretary in the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

Pawan Hans needs 10 such helicopters, but there is a major hurdle: the Mi 17 is not certified for civilian use, even in the USSR. Misra has asked the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to certify it for civilian use in India. The process could take over an year.

The Pawan Hans management is not blameless. For one, it tried to grow up too fast. Within two-and-a-half years of its inception - in August 1986 - Pawan Hans was operating a fleet of 42 helicopters from 14 stations, some of them located in the most inhospitable parts of the country.

This was accomplished at breakneck speed against tremendous odds. Given only two months in which to replace seven foreign helicopter operators servicing Bombay High, Pawan Hans started functioning at Juhu airport out of a wooden crate in which one of the helicopters had arrived. Then it fitted out a dozen such crates as offices and took over Bombay High operations.

But shoe-string operations in aviation extract a deadly price: three helicopters and 20 lives. The corporation needs 160 pilots, but has only 90. It needs about 70 engineers and has about a dozen. The normal plane: pilot ratio for helicopter operations is 1:6. But in the western region, the ratio is only 3.5 pilots to a copter.

Saini: troubled tenure

"Westland will have to modify the helicopter or keep repairing the engines at its own cost."

Almost all the pilots and engineers are from the armed forces, mainly the IAF, and are therefore used to operating only with massive organisational support and back-up. But in terms of technical support, Pawan Hans operates an operation in rudimentary conditions. It has single helicopters stationed at remote places like Gangtok, Aizawl, Kohima, Shillong and the Andamans.

It can take days to send a message to these places, let alone spares. In fact, sources say that engineers maintaining the ill-fated Westland which crashed near Kohima in February had been sending frantic messages weeks before the crash, saying they did not have oil to top up the gearbox.

The tail rotor gearbox recovered from the crash site was found to be dry. After the Kohima crash, the Ministry of Civil Aviation appointed a senior DGCA official to review Pawan Hans' maintenance procedures at all its bases and stations. A review of operating procedures is also in the offing.

Pawan Hans is guilty on other counts too. Both the pilots who perished in the August 1988 Dauphin crash off Madras were not instrument-rated: that is, they were not cleared to fly helicopters in bad weather. Moreover, Pawan Hans was operating passenger flights to Vaishno Devi and Bagdogra in violation of DGCA rules.

The DGCA insists on communication facilities between the departure point and the flight destination, as well as between the cockpit and ground control, so that the pilot can be informed of bad weather conditions at his destination well in time.

After the Pawan Hans crash at Vaishno Devi, it was found that there was no communication link between the Katra and Vaishno Devi helipads or between the cockpit and the ground.

"If there had been communication links and prescribed go around procedures at the Vaishno Devi helipad, the crash could have been avoided," says an official of the National Transportation Safety Board, which has banned the Vaishno Devi and Bagdogra flights till communications links are provided. Pawan Hans was also directed to lay down separate landing and take-off procedures, called approach and go-round procedures, for all helipads.

Pawan Hans also over-uses the few pilots it has. Those who are deployed at Bombay High to ferry men and material from one oil production platform to another, make on an average 60 to 70 landings a day. Since non-military, civilian helicopter operations in India are in their infancy, there is no limit on the number of landings a helicopter pilot can make in one day.

Saini, himself a former helicopter test pilot, says the 70 landings a day would be excessive if the pilot were doing them continuously. But, he says, a pilot does about 20 to 25 landings in the morning and then returns to a drilling rig or a processing platform for a rest.

He repeats the circuit in the afternoon, rests again and does another circuit in the evening. Saini feels this is not too taxing a task but not many others agree with him. As another official put it: "Pilots are basically mercenary. Give them enough money and they will keep flying."

There is some truth in that. Over half the earnings of a Pawan Hans pilot comes from his tax-free flying allowance which increases the more he flies. So the pilots have an incentive to fly more, and they do. Besides, over 90 per cent of the pilots are from the armed forces and will rarely question a superior's order. They will not think of the hazards of the flight.

The civil aviation authorities in Indonesia recently imposed a maximum limit of 40 landings a day for its offshore helicopter operators, while North Sea operators like Shriner do not allow more than 25 to 30 landings.

Says Captain S.P. Singh, a former If pilot who used to fly to Bombay High and has been doing offshore sorties in Indonesia: "Eighty landings a day are dangerous as the pilot starts reacting in a mechanical fashion.''

The Civil Aviation Ministry also feels that some of the trips Pawan Hans helicopters have to make to the oil production platforms at Bombay High are unnecessary. The afternoon circuit, for instance, is meant to drop lunch for the staff manning the platforms. A ministry official last fortnight suggested that ONGC provide packed lunches to its platform staff. That would reduce one-third of the daily inter-platform trips.

Pawan Hans too has belatedly made similar requests to ONGC to ensure that pilots do not have to do over 40 landings a day. The pilots don't complain about the hours they have to fly. or the number of landings they have to make.

That, they say, is for the DGCA authorities to specify. What worries the Bombay-based pilots are the "miserable living conditions" in Bombay which prevent them from getting enough rest. "After doing 70 landings a day the pilot comes home to a cubby-hole which he shares with another occupant. All this adds up to crew fatigue, which is the worst thing that can happen to a pilot," complained an experienced pilot.

"Pilots live off their flying allowance. They are afraid that if they complain they will be stopped from flying," said another. A Pawan Hans official admits the organisation is flogging the few machines which are serviceable: "Nowhere in the world are helicopters operated for 100 hours a month but we are doing so for more than 125 hours. And this too with pilots and technicians from the armed forces who are attuned to a flying effort of 20 to 30 hours a month." Supplies of spares are irregular and stocks low.

Saini admits Pawan Hans has spares worth only Rs 2 crore- Rs 3 crore in stock: the minimum inventory it needs is Rs 20 crore. So it has to cannibalise some machines - strip parts from them-to keep others flying. Once its engineers in Bombay had to strip four helicopters completely for parts, and removed parts from four of the six VIP Dauphins.

Since over 80 per cent of Pawan Hans flying is to Bombay High, the Juhu base will remain the major operations base in the coming years. The way offshore exploration is expanding, ONGC alone will need the services of 60 helicopters in the next 11 years. That will mean an even greater need for housing for its pilots and engineers at Bombay.

But Pawan Hans has made no serious moves in this direction though it was once allotted land at Juhu. Its first and only colony will come up near Delhi for the benefit of headquarters and Delhi-based staff.

In three-and-a-half years of operations, Pawan Hans has run up losses of Rs 23 crore. From its earnings, it has deducted Rs 35.32 crore by way of depreciation charges on its fleet. Pawan Hans and the Civil Aviation Ministry feel that the corporation should not be charged depreciation since the Westlands came as part of a grant. If the Finance Ministry concurs, the depreciation reserve will be used to subsidise future operations by the corporation.

As it is, most of Pawan Hans' earnings come from ONGC - Rs 32 crore in 1988-89 - since state governments like Kashmir and Nagaland have discontinued its services. Sikkim, Meghalaya, Mizoram and the Union territories of the Andamans and Lakshadweep are the only other users.

Though Saini and his colleagues congratulate themselves for achieving the impossible - setting up in three years "the only helicopter company east of Suez which has the know-how for offshore operations" - the three crashes have cancelled out all the achievements.

In the public eye, Pawan Hans is in danger of being labelled an unsafe operator. That can mean the kiss of death for an airline, but Pawan Hans managers are still on their Bombay "high".